Cocoapods - can't locate file for: -lPods / -lPods is not an object file (not allowed in a library)

Question

I have an iOS static library that isn't building. It uses cocoapods to manage a number of dependencies as well as being a pod itself.

What's interesting is that when the library is used in a client project as a pod everything compiles fine.

Here is the output of my error:

Libtool /Users/Bob/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/MyLibrary-fxukfghqxapkcqcnjjhmhecxahhg/Build/Intermediates/MyLibrary.build/Debug-iphoneos/MyLibrary.build/Objects-normal/armv7/libMyLibrary.a normal armv7
    cd /Users/Bob/Projects/MyLibrary
    setenv IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET 6.0
    setenv PATH "/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/bin:/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin"
    /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/libtool -static -arch_only armv7 -syslibroot /Users/Bob/Projects/Xcode\ SDKs/iPhoneOS6.1.sdk -L/Users/Bob/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/MyLibrary-fxukfghqxapkcqcnjjhmhecxahhg/Build/Products/Debug-iphoneos -filelist /Users/Bob/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/MyLibrary-fxukfghqxapkcqcnjjhmhecxahhg/Build/Intermediates/MyLibrary.build/Debug-iphoneos/MyLibrary.build/Objects-normal/armv7/MyLibrary.LinkFileList -ObjC -framework SystemConfiguration -framework Security -framework CoreGraphics -framework CoreText -framework CoreLocation -framework UIKit -framework QuartzCore -framework Foundation -lPods -o /Users/Bob/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/MyLibrary-fxukfghqxapkcqcnjjhmhecxahhg/Build/Intermediates/MyLibrary.build/Debug-iphoneos/MyLibrary.build/Objects-normal/armv7/libMyLibrary.a

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/libtool: -dynamic not specified the following flags are invalid: -ObjC 
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/libtool: can't locate file for: -lPods
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/libtool: file: -lPods is not an object file (not allowed in a library)
Command /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/libtool failed with exit code 1

What can I do / what other information should I provide?

Answer 1

My problem was that I went from using a podfile of the format

platform :ios, '6.0'
pod 'AFNetworking'

to

platform :ios, '6.0'
target 'myproject' do
    pod 'AFNetworking'
end

which changed libPods.a to lib-myproject.a. The project file was still trying to link libPoda.a though, which no longer existed and resulted in the error. Delete libPods.a from the link with framework section of the build phases.